Peanut and PopTart: Merry Christmas Everyone!

We are on the final leg of our journey and back to familiar territory! You
will have to forgive me if you logged in last night to see a post as we
traveled to Guangzhou, but the trip, two kids, hectic schedules and the fact
that it was already Christmas Eve here in China made it a grueling day! But
will detail all of that a little further as we proceed forward, so lets go!

Where did I leave off? Oh yea, we finished our stay in Nanning on Saturday
morning with a final breakfast in the hotel restaurant and we were then off
to the room for some packing and taking stock of everything that had
transpired while we had been there! It has been an amazing few days as we
received our son early in the week and spent the remaining time bonding with
him and becoming more of a family than ever. We enjoyed our stay, had a
wonderful time with the people, culture and location, but it was now time to
move forward and that meant a trip to Guangzhou. After packing we headed
over to close out the trip with a meal at our favorite restaurant. After a
quick bite to eat we headed back to the room to let the kids grab a quick
nap, then we headed down to checkout around 3:00 pm. After checkout we
waited for our driver on the front steps as the hotel was preparing for a
huge Christmas meal inside! It was so funny to be sitting on the steps as
Bing Crosby sang White Christmas while Chinese people scurried about
preparing for the nights festivities! Around 4:45 we loaded the van, met our
guide Mary at the local ministry office as the had procured Aiden’s Chinese
passport, then we were off to the airport with little time to spare! Add
rush hour traffic and the race was on! We made it with a little time to
spare, and with Sherpa like precision we guided our 4 checked bags, 2
carry-ons, four backpacks, and two kids through ticketing, security,
boarding (had to take a bus to a tarmac loading!) and onto the plane!
Amazing! But we were onboard and headed to Guangzhou!

The flight was very uneventful and Aiden did really well, but the funniest
part came when they served a snack on a 50-minute flight! We each received
a box that contained a snack mix, a sponge cake with crème, a roll and a
bottled water! Take that you frugal U.S. airlines! Aiden polished off two
cakes, a roll, and part of another roll and had to be convinced he did not
need more! Upon landing we once again went into Sherpa mode and moved
through the Guangzhou airport to meet our guide to head for the White Swan
hotel in downtown Guangzhou. The ride in was amazing as the city had just
hosted the Pan-Asian Games and there were beautiful flowers everywhere! We
could see signs that the city had really changed since our last visit in
2006; it was truly spectacular at night with lots of neon lighting and video
displays everywhere. When we grew closer to Shamian Island we could make
out the hotel in the distance and it was truly exciting! As we made our way
onto the island the traffic was total gridlock! Our guide stated that the
hotels were all booked due to Christmas falling on a weekend and the crowds
were a testament to that! People were everywhere, thousands of them, coming
to the island as it is the focal point for celebrating Christmas in
Guangzhou. It was almost festival like! As we were beat down with the
travel, we rushed to our room for a quick bite to eat from room service and
then bedded down for the night.

Sunday morning we rose early to find that Santa had delivered a couple of
presents to our room in the hotel and left a note that he had also visited
the house in Holly Springs! Savannah as elated to find a new movie and DSI
game and Aiden has a new movie and Talking Thomas to keep him company!
After getting dressed it was time to partake in the beautiful breakfast
buffet in the downstairs dining room, which is in itself a festival!
Adoptive families were everywhere and it was really neat to be back here
after 5 years and have those same emotions flood back in! The waterfall,
the red couch, the jade sculptures….it was all surreal! After breakfast we
headed up to freshen up before meeting our local guide Judy downstairs to
being the medical checkups and TB tests. We met some wonderful families
from the United States that we will detail more later, but there were tests
to be done! Aiden did really well for all the tests and only cried a little
when he had the TB test done. He is a real trooper! It was fun to explain
to Savannah about her experiences here as she is reliving it through Aiden.
After the test we all headed back to the hotel and a lunch at Lucy’s! After
a delicious lunch that included burgers, broccoli, grilled cheese, fruit
salad, beef noodles and more, we all head out to shop and take care of
laundry. We did our shopping at a couple of our normal stops, Jennifer’s and
Sherry’s and will probably hit them a few more times before we leave for
souvenirs and other neat items. After that we headed back to the hotel for
a restful evening and dinner in our room. Savannah made a new friend and
spent the evening in her parent’s room watching movies and eating pizza and
Ann Marie and I played with Aiden and had some more food from Lucy’s. A
night of rest was very good after a hard day of travel. Now everyone is
asleep in their beds and I am working to close out the evening in just a few
more paragraphs.

Tomorrow we have a light morning planned and then a local tour in the
afternoon. The weather here is a bit on the cool side and rainy, but it is
supposed to warm up as the week goes along. Only a 5 more days until we
start our journey home and we are more than ready! So with that I will be
you adieu from here in Guangzhou and will get back on my BLOG bandwagon
again tomorrow.

Till then……

Michael (I love breakfast buffets!), Ann Marie (Thank goodness Aiden likes
the stroller!), Savannah (Can I have a hotel room sleepover?) and Aiden
(this stroller thing is pretty cool!) Kennedy